Caravaggio (1571-1610)

One of the most influential Old Masters, Italian artist Caravaggio was a revolutionary naturalist painter and one of the founding members of the Baroque school of art. Best known for his portrayal of biblical characters as ordinary everyday people, he ignored conventions by insisting on painting from nature. This bought him much criticism at time, as some people felt his religious figures did not look reverential enough. Influenced by the Lombard school of art, his most notable works include The Raising of Lazarus, 1609, (Museo Regionale Uffici), The Denial of Saint Peter, c.1610 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Supper at Emmaus, 1601 (National Gallery, London).

Caravaggio was born near Milan in 1571, his father was an architect or decorator. Five years later the family moved to the town of Caravaggio (from which their surname came), to escape the plague which was rampaging through Milan at the time.

Judith Beheading Holofernes (detail)
(c.1598)

He showed early talent as an artist, and when he turned 13, he became apprenticed to the painter Simone Peterzano, a former pupil of Titian and a follower of the Lombard school of art. The Lombard style of fine art painting valued simplicity and naturalism, and this was to have an important influence over the young Caravaggio.

In 1592 he moved to Rome where he benefited from the patronage of Cardinal Francesco del Monte. He produced several works for the Cardinal including the Concert of Youths (Metropolitan Museum of Art). He also produced several genre paintings during this period including the Fortune Teller (Louvre, Paris), and by 1600 he completed the St. Matthew paintings for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, his first public commission. His method of choosing models from ordinary people set him up against the conventions of classicism and Mannerism of the time. His use of chiaroscuro (the contrast of dark and light to create tension and atmosphere) was both masterly and innovative. This gave his paintings, despite using ordinary people as models, a sense of spiritual poetry. His contemporaries copied his technique of illuminating figures against a dark background.

The Cardsharps (c.1594)

He went on to complete many prestigious commissions, including Conversion on the Way to Damascus, Saint Matthew and the Angel, Entombment, The Madonna di Loreto (Madonna of the Pilgrims), The Grooms' Madonna, and The Death of the Virgin. Some of his works were very popular, while others were thought to be almost vulgar in their realism and had to be re-painted to find new buyers. Other important works include The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1600 (Odescalchi Balbi Collection, Rome), Amor Victorious, 1602 (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), Madonna of Loreto (Madonna dei Pellegrini, Pilgrims' Madonna), c.1604 (Cavalletti Chapel, Rome), Ecce Homo, c.1605 (Palazzo Rosso, Genoa), Mary Magdalen in Ecstasy, 1606 (Private collection, Rome), Saint Jerome in Meditation, c.1605 (Museo del Monasterio de Santa Maria, Montserrat) and Madonna of the Rosary, 1607 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

Young Sick Bacchus (1593)

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Caravaggio the artist was known to have had a vicious temper and the passion in his paintings was often reflected in his life. An early notice was published on him in 1604 which stated how 'after a fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him’. In 1609 he was charged with murder, having fought his opponent over the score of a tennis match. He fled Rome and moved to Naples, and from there to Malta, after a series of other public brawls. By 1610, he was dead. The exact circumstances of his death are not clear, it may have been a fever, it may have been another brawl. Caravaggio was only 39 years old when he died, his painting career had lasted little more than a decade.

One of the most successful and famous artists of his day, Caravaggio's fame was short lived and in fact entirely forgotten about for centuries after his death. His innovations, particularly his dramatic use of chiaroscuro, inspired other Baroque painters like Rubens, but as he never started his own school or set about to explain or teach the underlying philosophy of his art, his reputation was open to debate after his death. It was not until the 1920's, when the art critic Roberto Longhi re-discovered Caravaggio and placed him among other great European painters in the history of art like Jan Vermeer and Rembrandt, that his reputation was re-established. He said that 'with the exception of Michelangelo, no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence'. What begins with Caravaggio, is quite simply, modern painting.

• For information about the best artists in Ireland, see: Irish Art Guide

• How to Update This Artist Biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

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